erik lundegaard

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Tuesday March 19, 2019

Nunes So Blind

“Rep. Devin Nunes, who is bringing a $250 million suit against Twitter because he has been the subject of mean tweets, is not an obscure kook. He is a famous and highly influential kook who chairs the House Intelligence Committee. ...

”Nunes provides almost no arguments to support his demand, which would overturn decades of well-settled legal precedent. In place of the extremely novel Constitutional case he needs to make, his lawsuit asserts that the existence of very mean tweets ‘runs contrary to every tenet of American Democracy, including the guarantees of both the First Amendment and Article I, § 12 of the Virginia Constitution. In the words of the late United States Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., “If there is any principle of the Constitution that more imperatively calls for attachment than any other, it is the principle of free thought – not free thought for those who agree with us but freedom for the thought that we hate.”’ ...

“You don't have to be a lawyer to understand that this quote—defending the existence of speech from those we hate—supports the exact opposite position from Nunes.”

— Jonathan Chait, “Devin Nunes Files Bonkers $250 Million Lawsuit Over Mean Tweets,” New York Magazine

Posted at 09:58 AM on Tuesday March 19, 2019 in category Quote of the Day